Jenni Ferrari-Adler: Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant

By ALEXANDRA GREELEY (special to Super Chef) Filled with food essays—some charming, others not so much— Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone (Riverhead Books, 2007) starts off with a great premise but veers off course throughout much of the book. Sure, editor Jenni Ferrari-Adler selected essays from some really outstanding food writers, from the late Laurie Colwin to Paula Wolfert, Holly Hughes, the late M.F.K. Fisher, and Rosa Jurjevics (Colwin’s daughter). But for some inexplicable reason, she has also included some essays that go on with a sort of verbal dyspepsia and miss the whole point of the book: cooking and eating alone. What’s eating alone like? Well, of the authors who did really address that, Laurie Colwin, (who so wisely and humorously looked at food as one of life’s greatest joys), in her essay “Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant,” got to the point: “Dinner alone is one of life’s pleasures. Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest” (p.21). She had just told how she cooked for and entertained in her first miniscule apartment in Manhattan, which had just enough space for a bed, a hot plate, a chair, and little else. And because of limited space, and even more limited cooking facilities, she often turned to solo meals based on eggplants fried or stewed with any number of seasonings. And she would eat with her feet propped up while she watched the evening news. This routine continued later in her life, even after she was married, had a large kitchen, and had a daughter: On those nights when she ate alone, she also ate eggplant. Others also have embraced the notion of solo eating, including Mary Cantwell, M.F.K. Fisher, Marcella Hazan (who may not always enjoy eating alone, but often does), Amanda Hesser (who includes an intriguing recipe called “Single Girl Salmon” (p. 46) and, on occasion, the sociable Paula Wolfert, who has spent her cooking career studying the cuisines of cultures where dining is a gathering together of relatives and friends. Yet Wolfert, on the rare occasions she eats solo, uses a special earthenware plate from Barcelona, inscribed with the words Pa amb Tomàquet I Pernil, which, in Catalan, mean “bread with tomato and ham” —one of her favorite eat-alone meals. But so many of the essays really have nothing to do with dining or cooking alone, no matter how deeply you look into the author’s words. What about the essay “Que Será Sarito: An (Almost) Foolproof Plan to Never Eat Alone Again” by Steve Almond? Stating that he learned to cook so he could entreat friends to dine with him, he spends most of his words describing his odd creation, a quesarito, adding as an aside that he is all for marijuana use. Then there’s the quirky “The Legend of the Salsa Rosa” by humorist Ben Karlin, which from beginning to end tells of his efforts to learn and then cook something called salsa rosa; it may, or may not, be truly Italian, he admits, but never mind. And he ignores the book’s theme. Finally, consider what Dan Chaon in his “Wild Chili” tells about his obsession with making chili, the hotter the better. He describes how he and a friend consumed what Chaon considers the hottest chili he ever created, laced with bitter Mexican cocoa, chili powder, cumin, and among other ingredients, psilocybin-containing mushrooms. Chaon admits he’s never been able to replicate the dish, but he does include a recipe for a more recent chili he’s invented with 23 different ingredients. Fortunately, the book ends on a high note with “Food Nomad” by Colwin’s daughter, Rosa Jurjevics. True, it is really off topic, but the daughter writes as gracefully about food as the mother did. And you shut the book, satisfied that some of the essays are beautiful paeans to food, even if they miss the theme altogether. Previous articles: James Villas: The Bacon Cookbook Bonny Wolf: Talking with My Mouth Full Gifford & Baer-Sinnott: Oldways Table Modern Indian Cooking: Khanna and Nayak Serves One: Toni Lydecker [Cookbook Reviews - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging --> back to Super Chef